I BELIEVE IN GOD-NESS

from I PRAY ANYWAY: Devotions for the Ambivalent

—Do I believe in God?
'Goodness' only knows
I believe in God-ness
I am totally open to mystery
God is not knowable
How we create language for the divine changes
We live in a paradigm shift for all things spiritual
Things fall apart before a new form emerges
We are caught in-between
New language and thought is emerging
The sacred continues outside of time and our paradigms
I hang on waiting for the next wave of knowing—


My thinking, my reflections all seem trite to me.
My wrestling with all things spiritual  is a luxury
My book is sacred lite
And yet I will turn for guidance
Into silence
Should I let this book die??

WORK OR WORSHIP, YOUNG ADULTS WANT THE SAME THINGS

I didn't know when I wrote I PRAY ANYWAY that I was tapping into a growing trend and expressing that trend in my daily reflections. That trend is people being disappointed if not disgusted with much of organized religion for its hypocrisy of not walking the talk. And with instant exposure to other religions, young adults find all theologies too narrow to fit with with their life experience and with new understanding of the history of religions and how they came to be. It's not that the theology needs to be diluted so much as opened up.

There are many books and studies coming out about the "nones"--the non-affiliated to any religion. There are many concerns in formal religions about the lack of passing on belief and commitment on to the next generation. 
Ed Stetzer in his book LOST AND FOUND consolidates, from many sources, what it is that young adults want.
I've put them into my own words.

—Deeper Community
  Young adults want lasting connections and small groups seem to work best in creating a sense of belonging.

—Making a Difference 
Young adults want to be of service to something bigger than themselves and to be seen as competent and able to use their talent

—A Conversational Style
Real talk, not stylized preaching about important content is what works. The style of the communicator needs to be 'real' and not put on or out of sync with who the person is. No phoniness

—Use of Technology
Young adults want to see technology to support the work of the church that is familiar to them and feels like their world whether that is reading scripture from an iPad or keeping in touch through Facebook.

—Cross-Generational Relationships 
 Young adults appreciate interaction with older people to challenge them and to share their wisdom. Effort and structure is needed to support this type of interaction, whether mentoring, or coaching or other kinds of support.

—Authentic, transparent Leadership is what young adults look for. With so much compromised leadership in the world, young adults want leaders who are honest and open and share their own continuiing learning in spiritual growth. They want to see leaders who make mistakes and own them and show how human and vulnerable they are.

—Leading by team
A participation culture is what works rather than a command and control kind of leader. Young adults want to be actively involved in running the place where they worship

—Experience of Worship 
 This is a fundamental desire that makes or breaks attracting young adults to formal religion even when the  other aspects makes are present. Young adults want vertical worship (a kind of trendy description). Vertical worship reaches up to the adoration of God--the sole purpose of worshhip. It is not about the horizontal concerns of loving one another better or avoiding certain behaviors. They follow the vertical. First worship God fully. Let all else come from that.

As a former Global Executive, these are certainly what most associates want in the workplace today.
Churches, Synagogues and Mosques should all borrow from the best practices in the workplace.
Even the vertical worship translates in to the secular arena of business. People want to work where the ultimate goal is worthy and prominent and rings true and is held as most important.

THE FEMININE FACE OF GOD MAY BE TRANSGENDER

I'm re-reading THE FEMININE FACE OF GOD by Sherry Ruth Anderson & Patricia Hopkins published in 1991. You know how we think nothing really changes (which is totally crazy in today's world?). 
We get numb until we have perspective from a distance to see all the shifts. This book was written to tell the story of how women explore and experience the sacred at a time when we were still experiencing men and women as very different.  The patriarchal DNA of organized religion was still very active. And it was anathema to women. I would say that is is also repugnant now to many men wanting to respect their spiritually and not see it as feminine nor brutally hierarchical and demeaning to the wisdom and experience of male searchers. 

We are all, male and female, searching for a pertinent and personally meaningful spiritual side to our lives. And not finding it in organized religion. That is what my book I PRAY ANYWAY made me see as I wrote it. We are in a historic moment or re-organizing what could be next in religion, if anything. But the spiritual yearning doesn't go away. And so we turn to our own experience of the divine as a starting point. Discussing our yearning or history or experience of the sacred has not been acceptable. It was either too intimate or capable of creating enemies or embarrassing for the assumptions that could be made about who you are. When I first wrote I PRAY ANYWAY: Devotions for the ambivalent, I was soon bashful if not ashamed to talk about prayer in an everyday way. Now I ask strangers, "Do you pray?, How? Why?"  People respond immediately, after being taken slightly aback. As I once blurted out, "I'm spiritually cranky and I talk about it."  Restless may be a better word than cranky. Enjoy these quotes from THE FEMININE FACE OF GOD.

Here are some fun quotes from the book:

—What does it mean to accept spiritual responsibility in our lives? How can we be still enough or clear enough or compassionate enough to let the deep truth emerge? Is there a “new way”? If so, how do we go about finding it—

—This means questioning everything we have been taught or taken for granted that is not validated by our own experience. Simply by asking one key question, Is this true for me? About each “truth” we hear, we challenge ourselves to become what we truly are.—

—it was disheartening to recognize that as a society we place no importance on sacred sharing in our daily interactions—

—So profound is this longing for our essential self that even when we are feeling alienated and estranged, our so-called negative feelings point toward the reality our soul knows as home.—

—I was swinging back and forth between a very deep cosmic urging and my feeling of terrible limitation. And what it all came down to was: Can I trust myself—

—However, prayer for is never limited to religious forms—

—Our culture offers us no support for periods of spiritual deepening in our lives. 

—Out of a yearning for what is personally real and true comes a yearning that is essential because it comes from the immediacy of our lives, and that is just what we need to find and live from: the penetrating alertness that lets us connect with what is sacred.—


All of these quotes and their content are ideas and feelings will be explored and played with in a 'playshop' I will be giving in September. More on that to come. I have it outlined to be fun and outrageously irreverently reverent and challenging and clarifying and satisfying as we tell our truths.

MAYBE GOD IS IN YOUR GUT

All I know is that when I am doing something very right, my gut lets me know.
I am headiing to California with my daughter and her daught to visit my former mother-in-law.
Peace and Joy galore.
Now for an uneventful trip
Prayers welcome.
Talk nest week. Traveling without computer!!!